There are many marketers who are under the impression that content is restricted to a blog post, an article, or a press release - this is far from true. Although the content types just mentioned are, of course, examples of content, they’re just the tip of the iceberg! Content comes in a variety of formats including video, podcasts, infographics, memes, lists, how-to articles, quizzes, polls – the list goes on.
It’s so important that your brand experiments with different kinds of content to ultimately figure out the content that resonates with your audience and keeps them coming back to interact with your brand again and again.
This point is easier said than done, naturally. But just starting by blogging regularly can help your brand enormously. It was reported by HubSpot in 2015 that B2C companies that blogged 11+ times per month got more than 4X as many leads than those that blog only 4-5 times per month. Blogging can be a powerful content marketing tool (as the statistic indicated!), and it’s a tool that’s right at your fingertips!
Blogging regularly about topics and themes that are highly interesting to your audience will help you build a strong brand authority.
You might have seen the term buyer personas floating around the internet over the past few years, and your company might even have a selection of them built already. In which case, that’s great. If you already have them built, have you simply built them, ticked a box and put it on a shelf? You need to be constantly thinking about that persona when you’re creating your content – otherwise, what was the point in creating them?!
You should aim to solve the problems that were highlighted as you went through your buyer persona creation process. This approach means your content strategy will continually have focus and a direction to work towards. Helping solve your audience’s problems through content is a less evasive and much more subtle way, let’s be honest, to promote your business and how it’s the best choice for your audience – without specifically giving them that hard sell that puts so many of us off!
We all know how much people live and breathe social media. Some fun Facebook facts: 72% of adult internet users use Facebook, and the platform has 1.13 billion daily active users! The potential locked inside social media can mean unbelievable opportunities for your brand. You can’t just churn out content on your blog and hit post all the time, even though your followers have chosen to follow your brand, doesn’t mean they constantly want to read the content you’ve written. Sharing is caring, as the saying goes, so don’t be afraid to hit retweet or share on the posts you think will interest your audience. Building a social community should be your aim here, not solely self-promotion!
Getting the opinion of others through your content can not only give extra credibility to your piece but, if it’s a thought piece about the industry in general and not specifically mentioning your company, there’s more chance it’ll be organically shared. And when the influencer shares it with their audience you increase your brand exposure that little bit more through content marketing. Getting someone who is a well-known specialist in the subject you’re discussing can help build your brand’s audience and authority in the industry.
If you’ve written a how-to guide, for example, don’t just publish it once and be done with it – you need to look at how you can get the most out of that one piece of content. Why spend a week or two researching, writing and designing a guide for it to be used once in a campaign? Chop up this content into manageable bites. You can write blog posts around each part of the guide, make the interesting statistics into a visually engaging infographic, or why not have someone discuss the how-to guide in a video format? Always look to squeeze as much potential out of your guide as possible!
You’ve spent a reasonable amount of time creating your content, so publishing it to your blog is a good start but you really need to start shouting about it – how else will everyone know it’s there? Sharing content to free platforms such as Medium and LinkedIn, can help you showcase your content in front of others. Spend some time researching which sites your audience is most likely to visit to read content like yours, this is a good starting point. Ask your current clients a few simple questions about where they visit – this way you’re at least on the right lines!
